Diane Vallere’s mysteries are for women who like “shoes, clues and clothes” - think The Devil Wears Prada with an amateur sleuth on staff.  But that’s not the only thing they have in common. They’re also full of humor. Perhaps not so surprising for a writer who lives by one of Coco Chanel’s favorite sayings: “You live but once; you might as well be amusing.” 

Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Diane talks about how Doris Day movies brightened her life after divorce and how binge watching TV  makes her a better writer.

Six Things you will learn from this podcast

How Dianne came to love Doris Day as a feisty role model

Her role in discovering Spanx 

How she keeps five different series alive and pumping

Why humor is important 

What she'd do differently second time around

Revealed: Her favorite "binge read" authors

Where to find Diane Vallere:

Website: www.dianevallere.com

Facebook and Twitter https://www.facebook.com/DianeVallereAuthor/ and @DianeVallere.

What follows is not a word for word transcript but "near as" repeat of our conversation with links to all the  important points.

Jenny: But now, here's Diane. Hello there Diane, and welcome to the show, it's great to have you with us.

Diane: Thank you, it's great to be here.

Author Diane Vallere

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning- was there a 'Once Upon a Time' moment when you realised you really wanted to write fiction, and if you didn't achieve that goal your life would be the poorer for it? If so, what was the catalyst?

Diane: I grew up loving children's mystery series, and for a long time I had wanted to write a children's mystery series, like a Trixie Belden. But I didn't have any ideas, so it was more a general thought.

Then I was working in retail one day, and I had an idea for an adult woman who discovers the dead body of her boss on the first day of her new job. It was kind of like an adult version of a children's mystery series, and once that happened it all clicked; once I had that idea, I became very driven to sit down and write it. It wasn't just this general thought cloud anymore.

Jenny: It sounds like a slightly psychological situation. Did you secretly want to get to your boss!

Diane: My first victim was someone I worked for, so there was a bit of working through aggression I guess!

Jenny: You've now got five series which range from cosy mysteries to comedy and "Chick Lit". I guess that's going to encapsulate quite a long story in a fairly short frame, but how did you evolve to five different series?

Diane: Well I started writing about the former fashion buyer turned amateur sleuth. That came very naturally to me, because my background is in fashion and retail.

Some Like It Haute by Diane Vallere

I felt those were the books I could write, but when I got the idea for Madison Night- the interior decorator who has modelled her life after Doris Day- those were the books I didn't know I could write.

I had grown up a little in that time - I had gone through things emotionally in my personal life, and that was reflected in the series. It allowed me to see that different parts throughout my life connected to different emotions  of a character so when I came up with an idea for someone, I could then identify with a time in my life and say "this is what this character is feeling and working through". That's what allowed me to keep coming up with different people and keep them separate.

Jenny: Sure. Perhaps if we mention that the first series was the Samantha Kidd 'Style & Era' series, and you've now done seven books in that sefries. When they were initially launched,